North Carolina was part of the Confederate South during the Civil War.
North Carolina was part of the segregated South for a century, but the lunch counter sit ins at Greensboro in 1960 were one of the first events to draw attention to the issue of civil rights for African Americans in the South.
North Carolina started to prosper, passing its neighbor, South Carolina, in social and economic progress in recent decades, and in population as well, and gained a good reputation as a progressive state.
North Carolina has a black mayor of Charlotte, which will be the host for the Democratic National Convention this summer, and that city is the center of major banking and finance.
North Carolina is the center of high technology and excellent universities, with Durham and Duke University, Raleigh and University of North Carolina, and Chapel Hill with North Carolina State University.
Areas including Asheville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill were strongly against the Amendment One, but the religious right, led by Billy Graham and Franklin Graham won out over the appeals of the educated ,and even of former President Bill Clinton.
So North Carolina has suffered, and will suffer in public image, and it will take a long time before North Carolina can regain the stature it had worked so hard to achieve in the past 30 years.
And to top it off, unmarried heterosexual couples will no longer be protected in their rights, either, whether civil unions or domestic partnerships. This is a heavy price to pay for ignorance, prejudice, and narrow mindedness, and provoked by organized religion, which should unite citizens, not divide them!